Nice review appeared on Amazon with a 5-star rating – I am so pleased:

“A friend of mine recommended this book, and I was skeptical. Many self-help books for women over 40 feature authors droning on about “look how smart I am.” This book is different – I enjoyed it, learned from it, and had a laugh at the same time!

“Liz Weinmann’s Get DARE From Here! - 12 Principles and Practices for Women Over 40 to Take Stock, Take Action and Take Charge of the Rest Of Their Lives- is all about “what was I thinking when I did that?” and “What do I do NOW?” Liz earned her MBA at the age of 56, and went on to write this high-octane, often funny, and very accessible guide for all women over 40 who are fed up with hearing they’re “toast.” Get DARE From Here! is for those of us who don’t so much need a book to tell us how to eat, pray and love, but welcome all the insights and ideas we can get for how to Drive, Advance, Rule and Express our Experience – i.e., DARE – in today’s real world.”

Click here to check out my book on CreateSpace

Likewise, I gorge on Websites, TV shows, and magazines about decorating, and before I decided to lose the weight I gained in business school (MBA = Much Bigger Ass), I used to read cookbooks to decompress, and for a laugh:  I mean, if you have time to cut up and roast whole leg bones from a mammal, your name is either Martha Stewart or Hannibal Lecter.

When I really need a rest from work, I crave books, TV shows, Websites, movies, actors, and magazines that feature celebrities:

1) Those who, “just like us” (as Us Magazine says) face and conquer adversity (getting fat, dieting and then getting fat again); or those whose anatomies are even more surreal than their wax-museum avatars: (e.g., Madonna’s arms, Angelina’s lips, Cher’s cheekbones);

2) Those who embody the accomplishments, joys and foibles of women over 40 who find their comedic voice, wisdom and other enlightenment in getting older, as they DARE for love, career, children, or other passions – despite money, memories, or mirrors.

Anything with Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Sally Field, Sissy Spacek, Cher, Diane Keaton, Helen Mirren, Holly Hunter, Mary Louise Parker, Kyra Sedgwick, Marisa Tomei, and other visionary, intelligent and motivated women over 40 who face a challenge; especially, when they mobilize their brains, balls, or bucks to win the day or move on, shoulders held high either way.  Not 40 yet, but Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon has more middle-aged quirks than a lot of women over 40, yet manages to swagger at detractors, snipe at debaters and diss dilettantes stupid enough to take her on.

If “moving on” for any of these women involves sneaking up on and then shooting her husband’s Fatal Attraction/bunny poacher in the bathtub, or getting down on her knees pledging sacrifice to God to demonstrate The End of the Affair, or choking from sobbing in the pickup truck of her homely farmhand husband as she watches her one-true-hunk-of-burnin’-love leave town forever over The Bridges of Madison County, all the better.  The more pathos and bathos, the better the pleasure and complete the escape.  Streep’s head was literally in the clouds when she flew with Redford in Out of Africa, and they hadn’t even made love yet – the whole movie is thrilling and the music alone is transporting.

Audiences of all ages and all genders, scream with Pavlovian predictability at the I Love Lucy episode featuring the chocolate factory assembly-line.  Likewise, Carol Burnett and her hilarious send-up of Gone with the Wind, prancing and stumbling around with a huge cascade of draperies – rod, finials and all – on her tiny frame.  And who would DARE play a woman past her prime but still making it and shaking it as poignantly and sympathetically as Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie?

Regardless of the names of the dames, you don’t need a lot of bucks to get your yucks.  NetFlix, which seems to have every movie ever made, has subscription packages for every size wallet.

Finally, here are two witty, funny and irreverent guides that should be on the bookshelf of every woman over 40 who needs a BREAK:  

Cinematherapy – The Girl’s Guide to Movies for Every Mood, by Nancy Peske and Beverly West; and,

Bibliotherapy – The Girl’s Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives (same authors).

DARE

In my twenties and thirties, I exhibited not a scintilla of that autonomic response.  In fact, I would hurl myself out the nearest door at the sight of a newborn baby.

It got so that most children I came in contact with realized immediately that they were not in the presence of Someone Who Could Mother.  Toddlers, pre-schoolers, tweens, teens – kids of all ages, in suburbs and cities alike – all just sort of knew that seeing me show up as their babysitter was not a good omen.  One day in a supermarket near my home in central Jersey, I happened to bump up against a shopping cart where a two-year-old was safely strapped in. Or – so we thought.  She took one look at my then Bride-of-Frankenstein frizzed-out do and screamed at the top of her mini-but-mighty lungs:  “Mommy, Mommy, a witch!  A witch!”

I can laugh about this today, and I have never apologized for not having children. But, any woman who has struggled mightily with the have-or-have-not question and the gnawing finality the conundrum of damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t presents, will tell you in confidence that There Have Been Regrets.

Many of us who regret, are also fortunate to have other people’s kids to engage and love.  Others are not so fortunate.  Many who wanted children of their own could not conceive and could not pursue other alternatives.   Many women who had children deeply resent that having children forced options out of their lives.

Many women over 40 are considering children in new and different ways; options that were not available to the generation before ours.  Adoption, perhaps.  In vitro.  Volunteering with children’s organizations, or those that serve the homeless.  Mothers whose children have grown up are considering going back to school, or back to work for the first time in years.  Many because they want to; others because they have to.

Still think being a mom comes easily to most women?   Hah! It’s the kind of DARE-ING Do that I didn’t DARE! To all Mommies out there whose beloved (or befuddled, or aggravating) children have occasionally referred to them as a “witch” or worse, here’s hoping that some day your kids will appreciate all that you’ve done for them.  In the meantime, if you’re still rocking that frizzy-haired do from the 1980s, maybe all you need is a new hairdresser.